Re: Manhattan Beach in perspective

eNo

Beautiful.

I notice that you have cropped at the top (from having looked at the colour version on your Flickr pages). I find so much white fluffy cloud drawing my eye to the top. I wondered if the B&W at the same aspect ratio (given that there is less fluffy cloud in the area you've cropped) would have provided a better balance. What do you think?

Re: Manhattan Beach in perspective

Beautiful shot eNo!! And great job on the B&W conversion. I like all the texture differences between the dry sand and the rough water. They escentually make virtical lines that draw you in to the background, but the curves slow you down along the way.

Re: Manhattan Beach in perspective

Cool shot - I like the B&W conversion. I agree with Donald that a little more headroom above the clouds would add more to the compisition - I'd even add so much as to get the horizon on a 1/3rd line if possible. The water in the lower left of the image looks like it might be a tad oversharpened.

Re: Manhattan Beach in perspective

Originally Posted by Donald

eNo
I notice that you have cropped at the top (from having looked at the colour version on your Flickr pages). I find so much white fluffy cloud drawing my eye to the top. I wondered if the B&W at the same aspect ratio (given that there is less fluffy cloud in the area you've cropped) would have provided a better balance. What do you think?

I'll have to re-evaluate that. I re-worked both the B&W & color versions of this image recently, and my intention (going back to how I framed the shot originally) was to emphasize depth in the foreground through vertical composition, and have the distant background as a nice destination, but not as the core or point of the image. For kicks, here's the re-worked color version, this time with an Ektachrome P curve treatment.

Originally Posted by Donald

- Love the whole of your 'In B&W' set.

Thanks. I've really learned a lot the past month about B&W conversions, especially after reading Michael Freeman's book on digital B&W photography. The 3 most important tools so far: Channel mixer, curves for local contrast and layering multiplication with opacity ~20-50%. Every image is different, so each requires a different sprinkling of these tools, but overall, I think I have a pretty sound process for B&W. The other -- harder -- part is learning to spot images that would "transcend" in B&W. I'm still on the early part of that road.

Re: Manhattan Beach in perspective

Thanks for your comments, Steve.

Originally Posted by KentDub

Cool shot - I like the B&W conversion. I agree with Donald that a little more headroom above the clouds would add more to the compisition - I'd even add so much as to get the horizon on a 1/3rd line if possible. The water in the lower left of the image looks like it might be a tad oversharpened.

Thanks. See my response to Donald re: composition, which may not be by-the-book, but I was pushing for something else here... As for sharpness, I'll have to double-check. I'm pretty sure I was pretty careful in the full size version, as with a Sigma 30mm at f/11, this was already plenty sharp. But my resizing for Web display (and Flickr's resizing on top of it) may have pushed the edge.